A Summer in the Wilderness / embracing a canoe voyage up the Mississippi and around Lake Superior

The author recounts a summer expedition by canoe and steamboat along the Mississippi and around Lake Superior, blending travelogue, natural observation, and frontier sketches. Vivid descriptions record river rapids, towering bluffs, prairies, waterfalls and caves, interspersed with visits to forts, trading posts and lakeside settlements. Encounters with Indigenous communities, fur traders, and itinerant characters yield accounts of local customs, legends, dances, feasts, hunting excursions and burial practices. Antiquarian curiosities such as mounds and earthworks, notes on wildlife and botanical observations, and episodic anecdotes together form a reflective narrative of wilderness landscapes and frontier life.